


the grass yields

by mavnificent



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:11:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mavnificent/pseuds/mavnificent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek leads Boyd to the flood. The story behind why Boyd took the bite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the grass yields

**Author's Note:**

> We never got a reason as to why Boyd took the bite, so I wrote one. Originally written for the Teen Wolf Fan Correspondent Contest.

Z-O-E – Zoe. Her name is short, three whole letters, small as she is still, raised and gilded in fading gold on the face of her grave marker. Boyd likes to trace the sharp corners of the Z with the tip of his finger, likes to follow the eternity of the O, the jutting prongs of the E while he sits in the grass in front of his little sister. He brings her bells of purple hyacinths for her bronze vase, crowns her stone with warm-faced, white-eared feverfew, and when he can find them, he'll bring a sunflower to break up the monotony of the cemetery because those were her favorites. He's a young man of small rituals, like brushing his palm across her birthday and death date before he leaves, just for a little bit, until they're skin-warmed, as if he can wipe away the latter, make it not so, not quite right.

He speaks to her, has spoken to her every day for the past four years. She's the only one he ever really speaks to anymore, and not for want of trying. _It's just easier, okay?_ he'll say to his sister Angela whenever she gives him That Look, the one that's pity and guilt and frustration and all the words they'll never speak between the two of them. _Well,_ she'll begin, only when she's had a long day, when she's irritated, when her patience has worn thin. _Talking to the kids at BHH would be easier since they talk back._ And the air will freeze, shift like their own, uncertain feet– Boyd will go to his room, Angela will linger in the kitchen. She never says sorry for those times, and he never asks her to.

This is easier than putting himself out there. Boyd doesn't like to talk, but sometimes he needs to, and Zoe is a good listener.

“Pretty sure Mr. Harris is out to get me. Pop quiz in chem today. Guess who bombed it?” He rips up grass, one blade at a time. “This guy! I forgot to tell him I closed at work yesterday. Figured he'd let me take it later since I haven't had time to study, you know? Oh well.” Boyd rolls his eyes, looks up at the overcast sky. “Speaking of work– made something extra this week, off this one kid– Stiles? Annoying like you wouldn't believe. Like you. Except he's a crappier haggler. But! Look what I got you.” He pauses to pull the sunflower laying cross-wise in his lap, sets it carefully just beneath Zoe's name. “Ta-daa....”

Boyd's voice softens, trails off, eyes sliding away. On the particularly bad days, his rational brain likes to remind his heart that he's only talking to granite and stone and sod. He hates those days, when his voice sounds crisp and quiet in the muffled cemetery air. It sounds...alone. It is alone.

“Well,” he says softly. He brushes bits of grass off his jeans. “I gotta go. My shift starts in like, a half-hour. Zamboni won't drive itself, right?”

Zoe doesn't answer. Boyd kisses his fingers and presses them to her name, lingers. “We miss you, Zo'. Ang' and Iris and Mom and Pop– we miss you. They'll come by tomorrow.” His lips part on a word, but he swallows it down and climbs to his feet instead. Sometimes, even when he needs to speak, he can't, but he figures that Zoe would know what he was going to say anyway.

 

 

Tuesdays in the cemetery are always slow, not that there's ever a lot of foot traffic in the first place, but Boyd hasn't seen any other plot owners or visitors; it's just him and the birds. The air has been holding its breath, waiting for that last word to rain, the clouds looking a little stormier overhead and boxing everything in. He unconsciously checks to make sure his jacket has got a hood, sighs with relief, and lengthens his pace. The walk to the rink shouldn't take too long, he's made it hundreds of times, but he really doesn't want to catch the rain. The hood's the only thing he's got between him and a potential downpour.

He hugs close to the edge of the lawn as he walks back up the drive, flower-colors blinking by him in the corner of his vision. The nose of his sneakers are worn, the edge of one sole peeling away and he knows he'll have to take super glue to it tonight after work. It's a hassle, but asking for new shoes from his parents will be one less thing to worry about. He'll get something newer, nicer, with his next paycheck.

When he passes the automatic gates, past the always-empty guard station, he turns right onto the road, and right into another body. Boyd pulls back almost violently, sucking down a startled breath, shoulders tightening in automatic defense.

“Sorry.” There's an apologetic smile in Derek Hale's face when he meets his eyes. “Sometimes I forget to pay attention when....” He motions with a vague gesture towards the cemetery. Boyd's not sure why, but the corner of his mouth tugs humorlessly.

“Don't worry about it,” he says. He doesn't want to admit that he's a little nervous, but he can feel his pulse jumping timidly beneath his skin. Boyd knows he's a big kid, but Derek Hale is a freaking acquitted not-murderer. And just because he was never found guilty doesn't mean Boyd didn't spend an inordinate amount of time seeing his face on the local news, and printed – always scowling – in the paper. He's not scowling now, looks relaxed, yet somehow dangerous. Boyd's not sure if it's because the teeth in his mouth are so sharp and white, or if it's how much his eyes remind him of the ice he cleans almost daily.

He makes to go around, and Derek doesn't move, but his body turns with him. Boyd stops.

“Were you...visiting someone?” Derek asks, and Boyd shoots him an incredulous look before he can stop himself. This is literally the worst place to have a conversation. Who stands around making small talk about the dead?

Derek Hale, apparently.

“Yeah,” he says, hands finding their way into the pockets of his camo jacket. He can't stop his mouth, not when he's got someone expecting him to speak. “Your sister right? I mean. Is that why you're– ” He fumbles. Boyd never fumbles. “– why you're visiting?” A pause. “I read about it in the paper, so.”

The way Derek looks away should startle Boyd. Does, in a way, makes him feel a pang of regret deep in the center of his chest, but he's spent enough time people watching to know how to read them. There's remorse in the shadows of Hale's face, but there's also anger etched into the lines, and not the kind Boyd sometimes feels in the pit of his belly. Not the inside-kind.

“Yeah,” Derek says softly. “Yeah, they finally closed the case, so she gets to rest easy.” He tries to smile. Fails.

Boyd nods. “Good.”

Boyd had heard little about the Hale house fire years ago, because he'd been younger, hadn't cared much about the town he lived in. Mom had called it a tragedy, Pop had shaken his head; Boyd hadn't really ever gotten why, since he'd never been acquainted with the family. The Kate Argent fiasco kicked up the dirty silt of the situation, unsettled all the ashes from the case, so he could only imagine what it was like to revisit all that devastation, standing at the foot of the grave of the sister you were once accused of murdering. Boyd shifts against a flash of guilt for being so suspicious.

“Have you ever wanted to turn back time?” Derek prompts out of the blue, voice breaking the silence between them. His gaze is fixed somewhere inside the cemetery. Boyd realizes he must know more than one of the bodies interred there; can't help but wonder how many of his family Laura Hale keeps company, how many they managed to dig out of the fire.

“Every damn day,” Boyd answers quickly, earnestly, because he's suddenly feeling more raw than exposed flesh, more raw than exposed hearts and muscles and guts. Derek chuffs a sound like a laugh at his brusque answer; Boyd understands that he isn't being laughed at.

“Who?” he asks with a raised shoulder.

“My sister.” Derek looks over sharply, and Boyd meets his eyes with a steady gaze this time. He's not sure why he's admitting this, talking about himself, but he thinks it's got something to do with the fact no one ever sticks around to listen. That the look he sees in Derek's face is the same one in his own. Guilt buried, feelings opaque. Boyd recognizes the look of grieving. “It happened a couple of years ago.”

Derek doesn't offer the customary 'I'm sorry', just nods, and Boyd appreciates the gesture more than he thinks he normally would.

“Makes you feel powerless, doesn't it?” Derek says instead; Boyd's attention snaps up. The remorse he'd seen in his face, the sadness, is clouded by the edges of guilt, hard and angry, and he's not sure who he's talking to anymore when he continues. “When loved ones die. Like you should have been the one to stop it, could have, maybe, if you'd been fast enough, strong enough. Just... _enough._ ”

Boyd doesn't think of how light a seven-year-old could feel in his arms, swinging round and round. He doesn't think of how Zoe's laughter is suspended in time and old archived videos. Doesn't think of the way she'd scrunch her face and how small her hand was when she would smack him for pulling one of her braids. He definitely doesn't think about, wonder about, how a body so light could fall so hard. He doesn't think about Angela's _watch her, I gotta go get Iris,_ how a little foot could fall wrong, find no purchase, doesn't think about how quickly his teasing had turned to yelling, how quickly a single life could be snuffed out so fast.

Boyd doesn't think about it. He doesn't, because he's done enough thinking for a lifetime. That's what he tells himself. Still, the guilt surges, new blood over an old scab.

He shifts uneasily, and Derek's eyes pin against him. He's not sure what to say, thinks his brain is telling him to move, but his heart is burying its roots into the dirt. Derek hasn't moved, but he's looking at him, actually looking, and that's a first, since people usually look right through him. He's never felt so much younger, smaller, than he is.

“Everything's put into perspective when that happens,” Derek continues. “Everything you'd ever complained about before becomes so...stupid.” He shakes his head. “Everything– everyone– the things you're left with become so much more important.”

Boyd's nodding, doesn't even realize he is, hands curling into fists in his pockets. Four years is not enough time for open wounds to heal. A lifetime isn't enough to suture them shut.

“Everything,” Derek repeats. Boyd's chest is tight with all the words he's kept hidden for the past four years, all the things he's never said to friends he's never had, to family he's never wanted to burden more than he already does, must, no matter how much he works. What's a part-time job when you're responsible for your little sister's death?

The grass barely sounds beneath the weight of Derek's step forward. Boyd's eyes feel dry, like he's been crying. He hasn't. Hasn't in   
a while. “Everything,” he parrots quietly after a moment.

Derek's jaw clenches, loosens. Then his face is smooth, intense, the one Boyd used to see on the news, the one he saw printed in the paper. He can see the slate blue of the sky through the pinholes of his eyes.

“What if you could be stronger? Faster, better? Better for you, better for your _family._ What if you could be all of these things, protect them, keep them safe. Keep _them_. If someone offered you that, would you take it?”

Boyd hears the click of his own swallow. The dry stick of saliva in his throat.

“Would. You. Take. It? Answer me.”

“Yes,” Boyd says sharply. He draws his shoulders back, sets his jaw. He's not sure why his heart is beating a mile a minute for theoreticals, for its, why the tips of his fingers are sparking with adrenaline. “Yes,” he repeats. “I would take it.”

Derek doesn't smile, but it's the first time Boyd's seen a smile in his eyes. Arrogant. Wise. _Proud._ Derek doesn't even know Boyd, doesn't know his name, and yet he's proud of him. There's a surge of something like significance in the pit of his stomach.

Derek holds his hand out. “Derek Hale.”

“I know,” Boyd says, gripping his hand tight. It feels like a transaction, Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles. “I'm Boyd.”

“Well, Boyd,” he says, a smile curving his lips. “I'm about to change your life.”

No, not a transaction. A promise. A pact.

Derek's eyes flash red. The first splash of rain strikes Boyd's cheek.

 


End file.
